other voice was, and, even when a little reproachful, how rarely sweet! She would scarcely have invented that last taunt if matters had turned out differently.  Then we think of our respected father-in-law, Sir Joseph Leyburn, of Harran Park—­a mighty county magistrate and cattle-breeder.  He got Ishmael Deadeye, the poacher, transported last year, and took the prize for Devons at the Great Mesopotamian Agricultural with a brindled bull.  We remember his weeping at the wedding-breakfast over the loss of his eldest treasure, and wonder if he was an arrant humbug, or only a foolish, fond old man, inclining morosely toward the former opinion.  We don’t seem to care much about Sir Roland de Vaux, the celebrated geologist, whom we shall have the privilege of meeting this evening.  What are strata to us, when our thoughts will not go lower than about eight feet underground?  We shall be rather bored than otherwise by Dr. Sternhold, that eminent Christian divine, who passes his leisure hours in proving St. Paul to have been an unsound theologian and a weak dialectician.  Why should Mr. Planet, the intrepid traveler, be always inflicting Jerusalem upon us, as if no one had ever visited the Holy Land before him?  Our ancestors did so five hundred years ago, and did not make half the fuss about it; and they had a skirmish or two there worth speaking of, while we don’t believe a word of Planet’s encounter with those three Arabs on the Hebron road.  Pooh! there’s no more peril in traversing the Wilderness of Cades than in going up to the Grands Mulets.  We are not worthy of those distinguished men, and would prefer the society of hard-riding Dick Foley of the Blues.  He had a few feelings in common with us once on a certain point (how we hated him then), and he won’t wonder if we are duller than usual this evening.  Perhaps his own nerve will scarcely be as iron as usual in the Grand Military, to come off in the course of the week.

Well, the bottle is out, and Mademoiselle Zelpa comes to say that “Madame is ze raidee.”  So one glass of Cognac neat, as a chasse (to more things than good Claret), and then—­let us put on our whitest tie and our most attractive smile, and “go forth, for she is gone.”

CHAPTER VIII.

     “A man had given all other bliss
     And all his worldly worth for this,
     To waste his whole heart in one kiss
       Upon her perfect lips.”

We were asked to dine and sleep at Brainswick, where the hounds met on the following morning.  Mr. Raymond could not make up his mind to the exertion, so Forrester and I accompanied Guy alone.

“By-the-by,” the latter observed, as we were driving over in his mail-phaeton, “I wonder if we shall see the Bellasys to-night?  I know they were to come down about this time.  Steady, old wench! where are you off to?” (This was to the near wheeler, who was breaking her trot.) “I think you’ll admire her, Frank; but, gare a vous, she’s dangerous.  Eh, Charley?”